As you all know, today is the day of Lavos as specified by Chrono Trigger. Of course, it came true. Here, at least. Anyway, we've got to answer some of your letters in between working on something else (which you'll see in a few hours' time.) On to the letters!

Droo..

Wow, that must of been horrifying experience, seeing Lavos and burning RPGamer to a crisp. Oh well, at least it didn't touch Thor's column page. How was this possible. Nothing in your explanation said about you saving the letter section, and Thor is gone for the weekend. Any explanations?

Gorax

Alex: Ineed, it was horrifying. But, you see, Thor's column resides in the underground portion of RPGamer, which serves as a bomb shelter of sorts for us. Hey! If it wasn't for the darned column, the rest of the site might not have been toasted. I'm going to have to talk to Thor about this..

The Quote Game

What's with the new black layout? It's kinda cool, but I liked the old one
better.

By the way: The quote comes from Chrono Trigger. It is Lavos's attack.

"Destruction rains from the heavens".

Death.

-Kiah

Ryan: Alright! You win! What do you win? A sack of monkeys? No, us sages are too cool for that. You win a big sack of jack nothing. It'll be delivered to your doorstep tomorrow morning.

Problems? We have solutions.

Ok, I have a problem. I'm at the end of Xenogears and can't get enough money to buy all the 50k gear parts. I still need like 500k. I've tried everything that i could find on the internet, but none of them worked well enough. Please help me out.

One other thing, it would be really cool if Square released a fighting game using the engine for the battling arena, wouldn't it?

Amber: Well, the best suggestions would be to either sell all your extra gear parts, or go through the last dungeon and fight the Seraphs on the level with the turning platforms (there's a repair gear there in teh top right corner). Otherwise, you're pretty much out of luck. But I did fine by only equipping my best three with the special gear parts.

Not all fun and games

Dear Great, Powerful, Amazing, Wise People Who Pretend to Be Sages

Darn it. All that praise, and now I've forgot my question.

Oh, right. Here it is: Does anyone on RPGamer ever go on Blizzard's Battle.Net service for Starcraft and Diablo? I'd just like to know.

Also, is Indiana really the Hell of Boredom that I believe it to be, where there is no comfortable medium between being a complete video game geek (3%) and being a feed store cap wearing hick?(97.99%, as my ego forces me to eschew both groups, instead becoming a demi-god.) And I mean that in the good way.

Z-42
Just like Zaphod 42, but shorter!

Alex: I am the Starcraft player here at RPGamer, and yes, I do use battle.net (not too often, I do find some of the players to be a bit.. err.. nevermind ;)

Import Woes

This may be a newbie question, but why is Sony (and possibly other
systems as well) so against selling their Japanese games in the U.S.? It's not
like they're not getting money for selling them to us (I still don't see how,
it's piracy). For instance, the new anti-import thing that will be in Final
Fantasy 8 and the tatooing of "for Japanese sale only" all over the games
packaging. Why does it need to be there? If they don't want us to get them in
Japanese, then they should bring out more games in English. Maybe there's a
good reason for this, but I see no real reason why (it's not like these games
will sell bad; why no Final Fantasy 5?). If you know any reason, please tell
me.

--Venatov

Ryan: Sony (and other video game companies) don't want us buying Japanese games because games imported to the US are more often than not pirated. I'm not talking Joe with a CD-R, I'm talking the multi-million (billion?) dollar Chinese piracy industry. Less Chinese pirated software seeps into the US market because of sheer distance, but much of the imported games/anime into the US from Asian countries is pirated. Therefore, the manufacturers of game systems (who are also publishers who have money to lose on pirated games) block imported software.

Lunar Questions

Hola Sages,
What's the deal with Lunar: SSSC? Is there added anime? I heard 80% of
the script was rewritten. Are the graphics enhanced in any way? Can I buy
just the game?

--Clouded

Ryan: You bet there's added anime. The game is basically redone, so look for a new experience. We're supposed to be getting our copy soon, so look for some upcoming coverage soon. And when we asked WD about a game minus all the extras, they said it was undecided.

Other Stuff:

Sorry for the short column today, we would have liked to answer more but have been extremely busy behind the scenes. We'll have more tomorrow. Promise.